Review of environmental impact assessment of land use based on life cycle assessment
A series of environmental problems such as degradation of biodiversity, depression of ecological support and damage to natural ecological environment are caused by the land use. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been widely applied for assessing the result of environmental impact in land use for over ten years. In this article, the LCA development in the land use (forest, pasture, cropland, wetland, residence) was introduced. The article also summarized the LCA assessment methods of two types of land use, i.e. land occupation and land use change, which included accounting models in evaluating the degradation of biodiversity, depression of ecological support and damage brought to natural ecological environment. Ecosystem Vulnerability, Conditions for Maintained Biodiversity, Species Richness , Ecosystems Rarity and Ecosystem Damage Potential were chosen as the indicators for evaluating the degradation of biodiversity; whereas, Net Primary Productivity (NPP) was selected as the indicator for assessing the depression of ecological support. Naturalness Degradation Potentials (NDP) and Ecosystem Damage Potential (EDP) were chosen as two key indicators in terms of evaluation of the damage to natural ecological environment Destruction. In addition, the following problems found in LCA should be solved in future. (1) The assessment methods of ecological problems caused by land use were still in the exploratory stage compared with other environmental impact categories in LCA; the assessment types, assessment methods, impact factors and accounting models should be improved in the future. (2) It is difficult to precisely evaluate the damage degree to ecosystem because its original state and information of all flora and fauna can not be obtained comprehensively. (3)Exact determination of the LCA re-suits from changes in time and space in land use. (4)Establishment of the LCA models for evaluating the greenhouse gases emission in land use due to the quantities of GHG released from soil respiration.
environmental science and technologylife cycle assessmentland usebiodiversityecological supportecological damage
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
